Task 3 • How liveable and viable are the urban streets in your city? • What do you think could be done to achieve a better balance of space, safety and accessibility across all modes (and of course in particular cycling)? • Does your city have a good “traffic-‐life” balance? If so, please describe and/or post some pictures which show such successful areas. • Do you have examples of a bad “traffic-‐life” balance of a street, or problems in sharing the available road space? What are the general barriers and problems with implementing improvements in these areas? The streets of Belo Horizonte in central generally are in good condition. When you move into the range of neighborhoods outside the limtes the Contour Avenue, towards the peripheral areas can not say the same. In general the outskirts of Brazilian cities have a much worse urban ufraestrutura than the central regions. On the sidewalks or tours, we have a different situation. Today Belo Horizonte has specific standards that are part of a standardization of sidewalks plan that is already in place in some neighborhoods, including accessibility for the disabled and direcionadoras tracks for the blind. But this implementation is restricted in some areas of the city, not extending to the other yet. In my neighborhood, for example, in the eastern area of the capital, the property owner is responsible for sidewalk directly and not is still required to use the standardization of sidewalks. In large avenues and urbanization traffic corridors is a statement by the City Hall which has specific projects for streets and sidewalks, also including bike paths that since 2010 have been gaining ground in the city, culturally and physically through implementadação Program Pedal Bh, already cited and detailed in other tasks. Despite having a satisfactory design, which allows walk in a nice way, the quality of the tours in general in the city is bad and accessibility is hampered by the existence of numerous obstacles and gaps that hinder the free walking pedestrian, except areas central and most privileged financially. There are also a lot of areas of conflict between cars, pedestrians, cyclists, cars and cargo vehicles for public services, among others.
I think this Belo Horizonte sidewalks standardization program should be extended to the whole city integrated with the planning of Urbana PLANMOB Mobility Plan and Pedal program Bh, ensuring accessibility for all users including pedestrians and cyclists. I also think that we should have more attention to pedestrian so you can walk safely and quality in the city. I think that first must be studied regions of greater complexity of traffic, including large corridors and connections between different modes adopted here. Signaling is a major problem in our city, the bike paths for example are very poorly marked, often restricted to demarcation on the track. Here in Belo Horizonte, I think it is essential, in addition to improvements in urban infrastructure for transport and pedestrians and the implementation of existing urban mobility planning, the creation of a broad education campaign that works the spread of good coexistence practices among citizens the city, whether users of public transport, drivers, cyclists, pedestrians or merchants. It must evolve in education and understanding and the limits for each range of users. Long desesrespeito the limits proposed by the plans and have difficulty dealing with various personal interests to the detriment of a more collective thinking of the use of the city. In the case of bicycle paths, we have great dificulade acceptance and respect those limits. We can see some pictures showing some good and bad examples of bike lanes implemented in Belo Horizonte:
Disrespect the area designed for bike path
Bike lane without continued
Central Stations MOVE (BRT) -‐ Cycle Route in BH -‐ good example
Bike path in BH -‐ good example
Questionable location of bike path
Modes of complexity -‐ Lack of planning for cyclists
Bike path in BH
Disrespect for Bike Path
Bike path in BH -‐ good example
Bad interface modal trasporte and bus stop
Delimitation of lack of space for cyclist
Bike path in BH -‐ good example
Signaling lack of Bike -‐ Bike path on the same level as the walk
One of the biggest mistakes being committed in urban Belo Horizonte planning is the lack of dialogue between the various sectors, sectoral organ, City Hall, and state authorities responsible for plans, projects and works in the city. It is clearly shown that when a project is implemented often do not is checked which planning for that particular areas. What the Mobility Plan is forecasting? What the Master Plan allows? What were once the projects undertaken for these areas? Which urban infrastructure are present there and that interfaces with the new soluçnoe proposals? What the community longing for this area? These situations have to be better defined before implementation of any project, we need to establish dialogue with the planning and thought exercised throughout the city.